In advanced civilizations the period loosely called Alexandrian is usually associated with flexible morals, perfunctory religion, populist standards and cosmopolitan tastes, feminism, exotic cults, and the rapid turnover of high and low fads—in short, a falling away (which is all that decadence means) from the strictness of traditional rules, embodied in character and inforced from within. — Jacques Barzun

Archive for June, 2011

Since I have been contributing little here, maybe I can suggest something of interest. I have been listening to the Ricochet pod-casts for sometime. Its put out weekly, usually on Fridays, hosted by James Lileks with Rob Long and Peter Robinson as regular contributors, an hour long podcast of self- described "center right" opinion that’s frequently light but informative, and easy to listen to when taking trips to and from work, or walking around in the grocery store. They have had many timely, well speaking, guests ranging from Victor Davis Hanson, Donald Rumsfeld, to John Yoo (who hosts the legal podcast) and Pat Sajak (who co-hosts at times).

The pod-casts are free and I download mine from iTunes. Ricochet also has other podcasts if you subscribe to their website premium pages. Cost is $3.58 per month, the same as a Grande coffee at the flagship Starbucks.

PS James Lileks has a nice website of his own. He describes himself as a "Writer, columnist, mid-century pop-culture enthusiast" on his twitter site. But his Bleat blog has content daily that is enjoyable to read, and his own podcast titled "The Diner" is a bit difficult to describe, like an old radio program in some ways, and only comes out sporadically if at all, but I like listening to it (recently while mowing the yard). I don’t know how he has time to do all the stuff he does: a local contributor to a Minnesota paper/website, personal blog, Ricochet, and of course Twitter, … and its usually entertaining stuff. Nice work James.